CONSULS OF GOD
Impossible to summarize the contents of this book in a few terse sen- tences, because being a book of destiny written during several decades, it is a rambling structure in which the trends of thought run in par- allel and then finally interweave. The author, who had realized and understood that he himself was a drama growing out of the conflict between divine and human will, here beheld history as a process dur- ing which God and His beloved are sundered from the kingdom of all which has abjured Him. Realization of this cleavage leaves only a choice between a state of self-love and a state of selfless self-sacrificing love. Though there may be little goodness to be found under the sun, though evil and good are intertwined mysteriously throughout history, it is nevertheless in the here-and-now that the die is cast for the eternal and the beyond. The peril in which earthly states live of succumbing to evil grows out of their lust for power. They keep themselves in order only in so far as they surrender to the heavenly Kingdom, which is the Kingdom of everlasting rest. Herewith the song of Pax Romana was ended. But is this Heavenly Kingdom the Church? Yes and no. It is so in the sense that the Church is the communion of saints, conceived before the beginning of time a communion of those whom God has summoned to live with Him in the past, the present and the future. But it is not the Heavenly King- dom in so far as its temporal existence is concerned, for during this it is a compound of good and evil men just as the secular state is a com- pound of such men. Nevertheless, being the continuation of Old Testament theocracy, the Church here below is the true soil on which a Civitas Dei can be erected. It is solid and more receptive than is the purely temporal state, which tends always toward egotism. The goal of this Civitas is to be Christian, free of the personal ambitions of princes, and able to administer justice in the spirit of service to God. The Emperor is the best servant of the state when he is the best servant of the Church.
The political theology of Augustine is so rich in corollaries that it never loses actuality. In spite of its inner contradictions, which re- sult above all from its definition of the Church and its relation to the Civitas Dei, this theology is, on the whole, of undiminishing and un- dying importance. It is unified by the conception of God's reign which everywhere informs it. Augustine sees in the theocracy of the
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